EXCERPT FROM WHAT THE MAN IS
by Hank Schachte
To possess another human being. To be zealous, jealous, in thrall of chemical love, infatuated, passionate — what is that? Something genetic, an urge, a force of nature to ensure the survival of the species, a package delivered from and by the genes, genes which are nothing but the collected strategies of time. And it would come to a personal bad end. It did not serve the individual. To think of individual life is a philosophical error; in the long run there could never be such a thing; that singular thing exists only briefly, privately, fleetingly, like unstable particles with their rapid decay, rapid like the decay of a life. To think of chemical love as a form of prejudice and a form of possession, not of the object desired but possession of one’s own will by an independent force — a triumph of species over self.
How delightful she is. How every part of me enjoys enlisting in the deception. How I favor her in every way, excuse her transgressions, boast her triumphs, aid her, enable her whenever I can without compromising my own ethics — every thought of her, every belief about her, colored warmly with this overlay of chemical prejudice. How deeply unfair this necessity called love.
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